Safaricom explains M-PESA downtime after service restoration
Sending, delivery, and payment services through M-PESA were disrupted for more than an hour on Tuesday afternoon.
The largest mobile phone service provider in Kenya, Safaricom PLC has broken its silence after the restoration of M-pesa services.
Sending, delivery, and payment services through M-PESA were disrupted for more than an hour on Tuesday afternoon, sparking many complaints from Kenyans. In a statement issued around 9:15 in the afternoon, the company led by CEO Peter Ndegwa confirmed that all M-PESA services have been restored.
"All M-PESA services are now available. We apologize for any inconvenience caused and thank you for your patience as we worked to restore service," Safaricom said in a statement. M-PESA services were restored on Tuesday afternoon following complaints from many mobile users who were unable to use them.
A large number of mobile users faced problems while trying to use the M-pesa services to send and receive money on Tuesday morning as transactions were failing to complete.
Customers received a notification message, “MPESA has a delay, and cannot accept your request. Please wait 10 minutes before trying again,” every time they tried to make transactions.
Many MPESA users used social media platforms to present their complaints to the Safaricom company regarding the service of sending and receiving money and seeking answers to the problem.
"MPESA is down @safaricom_care @SafaricomPLC," Twitter user @saagyn wrote. In its response, Safaricom admitted that the mobile money service was down and explained that the problem was being resolved.
"Hello. We regret that there is a general bug affecting M-PESA services on STK and APP.
This is being handled with the highest priority. Sorry for the inconvenience," the company responded.
The company explained that technical problems affecting the mobile money service had arisen.